Stir Crazy
by TheLostMaximoff
Summary: As she sits in her cell in the asylum, Wanda wonders just who's on the outside of the bars and who's on the inside


**Stir Crazy**

By TheLostMaximoff

Disclaimer: Don't own.  You had to know I couldn't stay away for too long.  Fics from me are going to be sporadic so I'll warn you right now.  It all depends on when I have inspiration and free time to do something.  This idea hit me before school started and seems quite prevalent now.

            The walls are closing in.  I've said the alphabet forwards and backwards more times than I can count.  I've named all the Presidents, listed every color I could think of.  I've remembered every birthday party I ever had.  That game didn't last very long.  I've done everything I know to do to occupy my mind but the walls keep closing in tighter and tighter.  Am I going mad?  Am I already there?  I must be or else I wouldn't be here.  The Cheshire Cat said that in Alice in Wonderland.  That was one of my favorites when I was little.  He said to Alice, "We're all mad here.  I'm mad, you're mad.  You must be or else you wouldn't have come here."  We're all mad in here, in this concrete and iron hell.

            It makes me laugh.  I watch the orderlies, the nurses, the staff, the doctors.  I watch them all and I can't see what separates them from us save for iron bars and concrete walls.  They look just as insane as the patients here.  They look like they're in a cage too.

            Everyone thinks there's something wrong with me.  Pretty Wanda's a broken toy with a few loose screws.  We'll just shock the hell out of her till those screws tighten up and sedate her until we give her a new coat of paint.  Then she'll be happy, well-adjusted, a productive member of society like us.  It's no big deal, really.  Soon she'll be all smiles, just like us.

            There is nothing wrong with me that needs "fixing".  This is part of who I am.  I'm not sick, just different.  Father had no right to put me in here.  No one belongs in here, absolutely no one.  That's what I hate about human nature.  We see something different, something "wrong", and we automatically try to "fix" it until we think it's right again.  You can't change who you are, not completely like they're trying to do to me in here.  No one should make anybody else change who they are.

            I watch these people on the outside of my cell and they make me laugh.  They give me fits of supposedly psychotic giggling.  Why?  Because we're all in a cage, every single damn one of us.  I know what they do when they go home.  They drug themselves with TV or pop pills to help them sleep and forget how bad their lives are.  They go out and try to drown out their problems with alcohol, sex, or drugs.  They ignore their families too because they just don't have the energy to deal with it all.  Maybe some of them cut themselves to prove they're not numb.  Maybe some of them wish they were dead and actually try it.  They're no different than us.

            I see them every morning.  Nice plastic smiles.  They're all fakers, liars.  I can see that on the inside they feel like they're in hell.  I can see that they keep trying to play pretend, keep trying to be happy because they know if they don't they'll be thrown in here with us.  What's so wrong with that, I wonder?  They were already in a cage before so it won't be that much different.  What's wrong with being what other people call crazy?

            Who do psychologists go to for therapy I wonder?  Who do doctors get to treat them when they're ill?  Do they do it themselves?  If so then why can't we do it to ourselves too?  What qualifies them to be able to judge their own mental health?  A stupid piece of paper from some university.  Whose decree said they get to make the rules about what's sane and what's insane?  The fact that I have to be shocked and sedated into submission so I can fit this society's definition of sanity is ludicrous enough to prove that we're all the same, that we're all insane.

            Us and them.  There's not a big gap, not a huge difference.  We just decided to stop lying to ourselves.  We know that we're not like other people but we've grown to accept it.  We've come to accept the fact that we're not "normal", whatever that's supposed to mean.  Our little quirks, our little habits, our little differences are part of who we are.  The people on the outside, them, they just keep fooling themselves into thinking they're sane.  Do they honestly believe that running electricity through anyone will help them get better?  The idea alone is insane.

            Yes, we're all mad here on Earth, the entire human race.  We all need to be locked up and the funny thing is that we all are in one way or another.  Stone walls and iron bars make cages but ideals, beliefs, dogmas, stereotypes, they can trap someone just as easily.

            There's only one difference between us and them and that's which side of the bars we're on.  We're really all in the same boat here, the same cage.  It's a very old one.  It's the cage created by a belief, a belief that we're right and they're wrong.  There is no us and there is no them.  There's just we and we all have the same disease.  It's not a disease you can cure with drugs or electricity or anything else save one thing.  The only cure is realizing what's trapping you in your cage.  The only medicine is getting rid of the us/them philosophy because that's the iron bars that's holding us as a race in.

            The walls close in tighter but I don't mind being alone anymore.  I'm never alone really.  The entire human race is in the same predicament as me even people as smug and supposedly secure as Father and Pietro.  I just put a little smile on my face.  The staff will think I'm crazy.  I'll think the same about them.  We're all the same here, we're all mad.  Everybody gets stir crazy every once and awhile and it's perfectly fine, perfectly understandable.


End file.
